


Starr in the Sky

by Super_Danvers



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, F/M, Making it up As I Go Along, Multi, ava starr gets her redemption arc, i have no idea who will show up in this, post Endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 06:53:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19969837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Super_Danvers/pseuds/Super_Danvers
Summary: By the time the Pyms found her again, she was nearly dead. She’d been slumped in an alley, against an empty food dumpster, for god knows how long. Her eyes weren’t strong enough to look up and see whether it was day or night, nor did her legs have the strength to hold her up for longer than a minute. She was so tired, and so weak, that she didn’t even notice someone cradling her head and trying to get her to open her eyes.





	Starr in the Sky

The Decimation years were not kind to Ava Starr. The first few hours she’d been confined to the bedroom that the Pyms had opened for her, waiting for her new found family to return from the roof with more quantum energy to help her control her phasing. She hadn’t known where they’d gone: when she’d gotten to the roof, all the machines had been there but her friends hadn’t. She’d been abandoned. The first few days she’d just hung around the house, trying to figure out what had happened. It soon reached the news that half the universe was just _gone_ , and she was amongst those left behind.

Ava tried to stick to the routine that Janet had had her on:

 **Step one** : wake up and have breakfast.

 **Step two** : combat practise and quantum top-up.

 **Step three** : shower and lunch.

 **Step four** : therapy session.

 **Step five** : dinner and school studies, and a final quantum top-up.

It was increasingly frustrating to keep up the routine when half the people she needed for it were gone. She didn’t have Scott and Hope to practise her hand to hand combat with, nor did she have Janet for her therapy sessions. Hank wasn’t around to plug her into the quantum chamber, nor could she share her studies with little Cassie.

She left the house within the week.

The second week she spent in and out of diners, only managing to eat meals where she only needed to use her fingers instead of cutlery. Due to her lack of quantum energy stabilisers, Ava’s phasing got worse over time, up to the point where she couldn’t even pick up a fork. When those began closing up, she rifled through leftovers in dumpsters and picked off of discarded plates outside of restaurants, but even with the picked food – she struggled to hold it down. It was making her more and more ill, and the pain of her phasing was making it difficult to even swallow her food.

Her suit was stolen too. Too weak to fight, and phasing too much to even land a punch: it was ripped right off of her back in the fourth year and she was left in one of Hope’s old workout tanks and a pair of dark grey leggings to stagger around the city in.

By the time the Pyms found her again, she was nearly dead. She’d been slumped in an alley, against an empty food dumpster, for god knows how long. Her eyes weren’t strong enough to look up and see whether it was day or night, nor did her legs have the strength to hold her up for longer than a minute. She was so tired, and so weak, that she didn’t even notice someone cradling her head and trying to get her to open her eyes.

 _“Ava! Ava, come on, wake up!”_ A muffled, but familiar voice called to her and she could feel hands gently slapping the side of her face. _“Dad, hurry up! Her lips are blue!”_

With the gentle sound of glass shards falling from the cuts in her back, something lifted Ava into strong arms and laid her down in the back of a van. The Starr girl blurred in and out of consciousness as the van started up and began to rumble away. What Ava didn’t know was that the saviours around her were the very family that had left her five years ago.

Hope Van Dyne, dressed in her signature long coat and baseball cap, cradled the girl’s head in her lap and tried to keep her still as the van rocked around. “Dad, can you slow down?”

“She’s dying, isn’t she?” Hank yelled over his shoulder as he swerved around the road. “We need to get her back to the lab, and fast!”

“Henry!” Janet reprimanded firmly, and the van slowed.

Scott, who was sat in the front seat, exhaled with relief. “Thank god, ‘cause that was making me feel sick.”

Janet placed her hands on Ava’s sunken stomach, pressing her thumbs down slightly into her almost grey skin. She shook her head worriedly, and looked up at Hope. “She’s not strong enough to take the right amount of energy to get her back to normal. Hope, she’ll be dead before we get home.”

Hope shook her head, and brushed Ava’s damp hair off of her face. She glanced at the girl’s lips, noticing their blue tinge. “No, no she won’t. I’ve seen her, Scott has seen her. She’s strong. What can she take?”

Janet looked at the woman laid between them in despair. Sweat was beading down her forehead, her lips were blue, her skin was grey, her breathing was hoarse and shallow, she was more bone than she was muscle and her phasing was wildly out of control. They were lucky she was still so she didn’t accidentally faze out of the van.

She glanced up at Hope. Her daughter was holding the girl’s head between her hands, staring down at her with fearful concern. Even tears were threatening her cheeks as she tried to make the other brunette say something.

Janet sighed and shook her head. “A few seconds, maybe? I don’t know, this is dangerous, Hope. We’ll have to inject it in dosages when _or if_ we get back.” She murmured.

“Do it.”

Janet held her hands out over Ava like she had done all those years ago, her fingers pressing gently into her temples. As the quantum realm energy from Janet’s suit into the brunette’s body, Ava shuddered beneath it. Hope was quick to tap her mother’s shoulder as a thin line of dribble escaped the side of Ava’s mouth.

“That’s enough, that’s enough.”

Janet pulled her hands away, quickly swiping at the dribble with her little finger. Ava stopped shuddering, and a steady rise and fall to the chest told them she was breathing. Her eyes opened for a few second before closing again. Janet nodded with quiet satisfaction before standing and shakily making her way to the front of the van.

“Scott, you’d better call Cassie so she can open the lab before we get there.” She advised quietly.

The man nodded and dialled his daughter as he checked over his shoulder to Hope. She was still trying to get Ava to wake up so she could eat something. Through the phasing, she’d managed to get a Pym Tech hoodie around her wafer-thin figure and was now gently slapping her cheek again to wake her up.

He hoped, for Hope’s sake, she would.

++

Entering back into the lab was chaotic, to say the least. Amongst the shouting of the Pym family, Ava was rattled into their infirmary on a stretcher pushed along by the ants. Hope was quick to follow, with Hank emptying quantum tubes into IV drips and Janet hooking Ava up to them. Scott disappeared to the armoury – where they kept the spare suits – to help stabilise the phasing with Ava’s spare suit and fresh clothes for the whole team.

In the walkways above, sat Cassandra Lang. Dressed in the Wasp suit and a Pym Tech hoodie, she swung her legs down from the metal walkway that she was sat on and controlled the ants around the lab’s open plan with ease. Although the teenager wasn’t far into her training, she’d taken to training with the ants like she’d been doing it all her life.

Frowning as the newcomer was pulled into the quantum chamber, Cassie unclicked her helmet and called the ants away. She raised a curious eyebrow as she caught a glance of the woman on the stretcher.

“Ava?”

Her heart plummeted as she recognised the dark brunette. With unsure reluctance, she clambered up from her perch and descended into the chaos. Hope was shouting medical jargon around as she fiddled around with chamber, and Hank applied the stabilisers onto Ava’s wrists to prevent from an overload. Janet gently, but firmly, pulled Cassie aside.

“Hey, sweetheart. She’ll need something to eat when she wakes up, so could you-?“

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it, Dr Pym.” Cassie was quick to reply, but slow to leave. “Is, um, a sandwich okay?”

Over Hope’s shoulder, she watched Ava for a few moments. Her pale and scratched skin and dead eyes were haunting to look at, and yet, she couldn’t look away. The seventeen-year-old was shaken back into reality when she felt Janet’s hand squeeze her shoulder.

“It’s alright.” She whispered. “The quantum energy from the chamber will help stabilize her, and the suit will keep her from phasing as much.”

Cassie shook her head, her eyes never leaving Ava’s face. “It’s not that.” She muttered, then shrugged herself out of the older woman’s grip and stalked off to the kitchen.

She passed her father on the way. He had a spare quantum suit in his arms, and a first aid kit in his hands. He smiled kindly as she passed.

“You okay, peanut?” He paused, noticing the troubled frown written on his daughter’s features.

Cassie just shrugged and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. “Yeah, I’m fine. You?”

“All good, yep. Do you think you could make Ava-?”

“A sandwich, sure. Already on it.”

Scott nodded, and backed off from the teenager’s short nature. Maybe the whole situation was a little overwhelming for her, so he just nodded again. “There’s spare clothes around somewhere, but I think you quite like that suit.”

A small smile twitched Cassie’s lips and the brunette headed on towards the kitchen, letting her father rush back to the infirmary to help out. Peace and quiet was restored to Cassie’s ears as she began making Ava’s sandwich: Hope’s shouts muffled by the corridors.

From what she could remember, Ava’s favourite was peanut butter and jelly. As she spread it across the bread, guilt kept waving over her. Her family, all but Paxton, had been gone for five years and she hadn’t once thought about whether Ava was still alive or not. Granted, she’d only been twelve when it had happened and Pax wouldn’t even let her near the lab apart from when they moved her father’s van into storage, but still.

Cassie felt awful.

In her wave of guilt, the teenager ended up making enough sandwiches for everyone else. She added a glass of water for Ava and then stuck it and the sandwiches onto a tray and headed back to the infirmary. In the fifteen minutes she’d been gone, everything seemed to have calmed down.

Hank was quietly monitoring the quantum chamber with Janet quietly noting things down beside him. Scott was in the quantum chamber, carefully manoeuvring the spare quantum suit onto Ava with the Pyms watching over him carefully.

Hope was perched on a storage box a few metres from the chamber with her coat tossed over a chair. She was focused on the chamber, casting a spare eye on Scott. Being the only one not doing anything, Cassie decided she was best to approach.

“Sandwich?”

Hope jumped. She’d been lost in her thoughts until the teenager spoke, offering out a tower of sandwiches. Cassie felt a little nervous as Hope turned her head towards her and slowly raised an eyebrow. The woman had a way of making people feel little when she looked at them. Like she could crush them by just blinking at them.

Cassie nearly retracted her arm back when Hope took a sandwich from the top.

“Thanks.” She murmured. When she didn’t look away from the dark-haired girl, nor did she tell her to go away, Cassie put the sandwiches on a nearby table and then hopped onto the box beside her, eating a sandwich of her own.

The two didn’t speak for a few moments, both of them just watching Ava be fitted into her suit. Finally, once she’d finished her sandwich, Hope spoke.

“Are you okay?”

Cassie glanced at the older woman. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Hope tightened her mouth through a sigh, her shoulders slumping forward. “I don’t know, this is kind of overwhelming, for someone of your age and-“

“Please don’t patronise me, Hope.” Cassie cut in. Her tone wasn’t nasty, or short, but it let Hope know that she meant it.

Although she was only seventeen, Cassie Lang was a lot older than she should be. She’d spent most of her life without at least one parent, so she knew how to handle herself and she knew when somebody was speaking down to her. She didn’t blame Hope. Her dad did it too, so did her mom at times. They’d only been back a few weeks, the world was still trying to pull itself together and so were they. For Hope, it hadn’t been long ago that she’d been speaking with a preteen. 

“Sorry.” She apologised. “I know it’s harder for you. Not because of your age but-“

Cassie shook her head. “It’s fine.” She gestured to Ava, staring at the unconscious girl in the bed. “Is she going to be alright?”

Hope looked relieved to be on a different topic, and so leaned forward and took another sandwich. “I don’t know, I hope so. Mom’s going to try and put a temporal interceptor on it – it’ll let us see her brain waves whilst she’s unconscious.”

“So, what will that do?”

“It’ll show us how long she’s been deprived of the energy she needs to keep her cells together, which will tell us how much she needs and what kind of dosage we’ll put her on.” Hope explained. “We’ll also need to get her back on physical therapy, do you think you could help with that? I imagine you will, seeing as you’re continuously borrowing my suit without asking.”

The two chuckled for a moment, with Cassie nodding her agreement and taking her own turn to apologise. Hope held up a dismissive hand and shook her head.

“No, you look good in it. It fits you, so that’s a bonus.” She remarked, then pointed to Ava again. “I think she’ll need a new one, though. Don’t know what happened to her last one.”

“Will we get to train later?”

Hope held in a sigh, her mind scanning around the room as she mentally tried to find an answer. Cassie noticed how tired she looked, and so figured out the answer before Hope did. She placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Sorry.” Hope mumbled again.

Cassie shook her head. “Don’t be. I can still help you out with Ava though, right?”

“Of course.”

The two sat in quiet respect for another few moments, just regarding each other as they ate their sandwiches. The next few weeks – or perhaps months – were going to be hard, and they both knew it. They were going to need each other and that prospect right now was… _daunting_. It was going to be interesting to see how their dynamic worked out over this time, as they hadn’t been able to spend much time together since everyone had come back.

Hope looked at Cassie out the corner of her eye. It was hard to look at the teenager properly at the moment. To Hope, two weeks ago Cassie had barely come up to her elbows and now she was only a few inches shorter than she was. The sunshine of a smile was gone and replaced by a dimpled grin that reminded Hope of Scott. In the Decimation years, Cassie had spent a lot of her time keeping her physical strength up and so her arms were well-toned and her legs were strong and lean.

Still, that didn’t stop her from wanting to train with her father and Hope.

The Van Dyne girl sighed again, and clapped a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “This should be interesting.”


End file.
